Coexist for thee, but not for me

There are four cars with “Coexist” bumper stickers on our block. The funny thing is, each one is on a car belonging to a member of a divorced couple. My neighbors are telling the religions of the world that they need to learn to live together, when these people can’t even live with the one person that they were married to.

I’m all for peaceable relations among religions, but boy do I hate that bumper sticker. Every time I see it, I think that the person driving that car is probably an insufferable, intolerant, and heavily tattooed Mrs. Jellyby, Dickens’s “telescopic philanthropist” who is so busy trying to reform the far-off heathens that she neglects her own family. People like, well, my friend’s neighbors.

UPDATE: Great comment from Niall Gooch in the discussion thread:

It’s interesting, this tension between wanting to be involved in grand moral projects and actually getting our own moral house in order. Some of the most unkind, intolerant, self-centred people I know are also those who are most enthusiastic about grand moral abstractions. As William Blake put it, ‎”He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite and flatterer” (I’ve seen this rendered more prosaically as “everyone wants to save the rainforest, no-one wants to wash the dishes”).

We all have a lot to learn from GK Chesterton’s famous response to the question “what’s wrong with the world?”; the unbeatably succinct and accurate “I am”. The boring reality is that for the majority of people, the single most effective thing we can do to make the world a better place is to undergo the long, hard work of cultivating the virtues in our own lives.

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34 Responses to Coexist for thee, but not for me

Rod, this is making me very nervous. We agree again. There is something about the smug “we are so wonderful because we are telling all the rest of you poor dumb rednecks to get along,” that makes me want to deflate their tires.

Every time I see it, I think that the person driving that car is probably an insufferable, intolerant, and heavily tattooed Mrs. Jellyby, Dickens’s “telescopic philanthropist” who is so busy trying to reform the far-off heathens that she neglects her own family.

There’s yet another reason I drive as little as possible – besides not having to share the road – or “coexist” – with the members of that vast sea of human blanks sporting the usual array of insufferable “I’m virtuous, and so should you be” bumper stickers, I am spared my default fantasy in such situations, always aborted, so far, at least, just barely on the lee side of landing me in one or another of the nation’s several electric chairs (I’m hoping for a scooter version some day), in which I run the offender off the road and over the next cliff, stopping my own car just in time to watch theirs, and avoid having mine, tumble end over end, Hollywood-style, unto the bottom, as I wait with lit cigarette and blow gun, just in case, for the fireball conclusion.

Whenever I’m asked, during a job interview or on a “date”, “Is there anything else you’d like us to know about you?”, I like to toss that in just to show I’m human.

Allen, again, you completely miss the point. I’m not saying that religious coexistence is a bad idea. It’s a comment about the … oh, never mind.

Anduril, if you want bumper sticker exegesis, I’m your man. I especially hate one I’ve seen around my neighborhood lately: “Humankind — be both.” Hey, I’m for being human, and I’m for being kind. But this one makes me think of Mr. Van Driessen. It puts me in touch with my inner Beavis.

P.S. Scott Lahti has put his finger on what is so annoying about this sort of bumper sticker: the “I’m virtuous and so should you be” subtext. I don’t have any problem with “Obama 2012,” “Choose Life,” “Greenpeace,” etc. It’s the ones that sound so prissy that annoy me.

Rod, I know you’re not saying that religious coexistence is a bad idea. I never said that.

A little self-satisfied smugness in quip form is hardly worth your vituperative snap-judgment on the character of people you don’t know. Why should I extend you any more generosity than you choose to extend to them?

The coexist bumper sticker irritates me no end since the developer apparently has no grounding in theology, otherwise he would understand that the first logo in the bumper sticker has a very difficult time coexisting with the others.

Rod and others, I take your point completely … but I happen to be around many (too many) people who think that their religion or their approach to things are uniquely correct, and those who think and do otherwise are at best confused and at worst evil … so actually I find that bumpersticker kind of refreshing.

Every time I see the “Coexist” bumper sticker I politely say out loud “Co-f*%# yourself”. I don’t really mean it, but it makes my wife laugh every time. I think that would make a great bumper sticker and would be a more genuine expression of people’s feelings than “Coexist”, especially when driving.

Origin: “A Polish graphic designer, Piotr Mlodozeniec, designed the first coexist image. He created the design to participate in an art contest hosted by the Museum on the Seam for Dialogue, Understanding, and Coexistence in Israel to promote religious tolerance.”

The museum, in Jerusalem, was founded by the German publishing magnates, the von Holtzbrinck family. It seems to be full of bad political art.

Allen: A little self-satisfied smugness in quip form is hardly worth your vituperative snap-judgment on the character of people you don’t know.

Allen, please, get hold of yourself. You are taking things way, way too seriously. If you can’t see the humor in people who can’t coexist with their spouses taking it upon themselves to tell the great religions of the world to coexist with each other, I am sorry. But it is funny, and is indicative of a certain mindset.

When I was in college, I worked for a while with a leftist student group (this was early in my college career). We loved loved loved “the People,” but boy, we sure couldn’t stand the unenlightened people we actually had to live with on our campus.

It’s interesting, this tension between wanting to be involved in grand moral projects and actually getting our own moral house in order. Some of the most unkind, intolerant, self-centred people I know are also those who are most enthusiastic about grand moral abstractions. As William Blake put it, ‎”He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite and flatterer” (I’ve seen this rendered more prosaically as “everyone wants to save the rainforest, no-one wants to wash the dishes”).

We all have a lot to learn from GK Chesterton’s famous response to the question “what’s wrong with the world?”; the unbeatably succinct and accurate “I am”. The boring reality is that for the majority of people, the single most effective thing we can do to make the world a better place is to undergo the long, hard work of cultivating the virtues in our own lives.

My favorite bumper sticker story, told to me by a colleague: her father, an old country doctor in Lubbock, pulled up behind a car at a stop light. He noticed a bumper sticker on the car in front of him that said, “Honk if you love Jesus.” Being a devout Christian, he happily honked his horn. Well, the person in front of him must have forgotten about the sticker, because the response was a one-fingered salute.

While I’ll confess sympathy with the idea behind the bumper sticker (which I take to be a condemnation of religiously-motivated violence), it’s worth noting that when the lawyer asked Christ who his neighbor was, Christ’s basic answer was “your neighbor is the person in need right in front of you, who so happens to be a member of the group you most loathe. So CoExist makes eminent sense, provided we start by “coexisting” with our next-door neighbor with whom we disagree, no?

But to the extent that the CoExist sticker represents some kind of abstract “love for humanity” expressed by those who tend to hate their neighbors, it deserves the scorn heaped upon it by many in this comments thread.

I am assuming the friend whom you quote knows all about his divorced neighbors’ personal circumstances, and is qualified to judge (according to him) whether or not their divorces were “justified” by his standards.

This is a little off-topic, but apropos of drivers flipping each other off and small-town living, the other day I was sorely tempted to give the bird to a man who breezed right through a stop sign, ignoring my turn. Then I saw who it was: a local man who lost his first son in a car accident and a second son from suicidal depression shortly after his brother died.

I didn’t even lay on my horn. Love of humanity wouldn’t have stopped me, but knowledge of his particular “neighbor’s” sufferings, did.

Come on, Stef, you are taking this way too seriously. It was just an offhand remark my friend made, observing that the people in his neighborhood who busy themselves telling members of world religions that they should learn how to live together despite their differences can’t even manage to live with their spouses. I don’t know the circumstances of these divorces, and I don’t know if my friend does. I am quite sure that if abuse was involved in any or all of these cases, he would have favored divorce. The general point — that there is among progressive people (my friend lives in a very liberal college town) to love humanity in general but not in particular — stands.

(I have heard it said that conservatives take the opposite approach: they hate humanity in general but love people in particular. I have seen evidence for this as well.)

the thing that annoys me about the coexist bumper sticker–as much as i agree with the general sentiment–is that i think the averge citizen has no idea what it means–and that those that do already agree with its message—-it gives a warm feeling of righteousness to its posessors—while it leaves the majority population (who cannot identify many of the symbols) scratching their heads.